"Initialisation Failed Game not found"

[Unextinct]

I've been following the STEP guide and have installed all the mods through MO. Attempting to use BOSS or any other executable through MO causes an error dialog titled "Initialisaiton Failed" with text "game not found". The program selected then runs without any MO mods (e.g boss only sees the expansion files). I've set the entire steam folder off of read only, changed all executables to requiring admin and then to not requiring admin, reinstalled SKSE and MO (updated to 1.21 beta) and removing ModOrganiser.ini . Running skyrim through skse_loader.exe, SkyrimLauncher.exe or TESV.exe does not cause this error to appear, but of course no mods. Any suggestion on how to fix this? Google doesn't seem to provide any answers here.

[Unextinct]

A temporary new installation of steam with skyrim thrown in seems to fix the problem. Using and old mod organiser version (1.01?) showed an oblivion install in a directory full of asian characters, likely a remnant from when steam once played up and reinstalled itself in E:x86 without any prompt from me. The skyrim install had the correct path, perhaps some data related was wrong and when MO followed that, it couldn't find skyrim, but would load the game listed in its own .ini file? Not smart enough to have a clue here.To anyone else having this problem, rename your steam folder so that shortcuts and registry keys won't work and reinstall steam somewhere else for skyrim's use. Consider deleting (or renaming) wherever windows keeps its game shortcuts, especially if youre seeing corrupted links like in oblivion above.  

[EssArrBee]

E:x86? Make sure that you directory isn't the Program Files folder. Can't stress that enough. Either way it seems that you may have had a case of Windows gremlins.

[Unextinct]

Nah that's the full name of the folder, and is sitting on an external hard drive. Files aren't protected and can be accessed and altered freely with or without administrator rights. Not sure why steam decided to place itself there, might have something to do with the same hard drive / steam installation being used on both this desktop and a laptop. This is the first time any sort of problem has shown up with that installation though, so yeah I'd blame gremlins.

[DocClox]

I get this one very occasionally. I think it's probably a timing error, with the game trying to start before MO finalises the VFS. Whatever the reason, MO then seems to run Skyrim on the unmodified Skyrim install, presumably as a fallback case.

 

If it is a timing error, that might fit in with an external HD. Though gremlins is probably good enough explanation :)